How do I preserve table column widths in copy paste?

[Stephen Ellwood]

I have a Python program that reads in an Excel sheet and turns it into Word based documentation.  I copy this and paste it into a Confluence page and all the nice table formatting is lost. Specifically, all of the columns are the same width in Confluence; the width of the source is lost. This worked perfectly in Mindtouch, our previous Wiki. There are over 100 tables in the output and I had to spend nearly half an hour manually re-adjusting the tables so they looked the same.

I also tried to save the word file as HTML. The HTML looked great.  The copy-pasted Confluence page not so much. Can anyone shed some light on how this might be done.  As far as I can tell I cannot paste raw HTML into the page.  Again Mindtouch, which is 10 years older than Confluence allowed me to edit the HTML with a single push button then copy-paste raw HTML in there.

[Prince Nyeche]

Hi @Stephen Ellwood 

Welcome to community! On Cloud I don't think it allows raw HTML to be added directly. If it was on markdown most probably it can render it but HTML, it will most definitely strip it out. 

[Stephen Ellwood]

Thanks for the answer.  To be clear, I don't want to have to use html, I would rather that the word importer preserves all of the formatting in the source.  Since I can do it manually it is clearly possible to create a Confluence page that looks the way I want, its just that I have not found a way yet of doing it automatically.

[Prince Nyeche]

Hi, you can look into using API to do what you want?

[Stephen Ellwood]

Where would I find the documentation on the API?

[Prince Nyeche]

Hi, I already gave a link to the docs in my previous response.

[Stephen Ellwood]

Apologies, did not see the blue in the black :o)

[Stephen Ellwood]

I have taken a look at the API but its not immediately obvious how to write a table into a page and how to encode the page widths.  This is a week's work at least to get up to speed with so does not solve my problem in the short term.